#FBF That Time I Got Hit by a Car in SF

Yes, there are pedestrians darting haphazardly across the street against traffic in the Tenderloin and making protected turns impossible in the Union Square area, and there are bikers zooming carelessly along in your blind spot, but they are not the owners of the streets.

I learned this the hard way a few years ago.

For a time, I lived in New York City. I was used to a city that belonged to pedestrians, where drivers have no choice but to yield to the glut of people crossing against the light because they feel like it, completely oblivious to the fact that they do not, in fact, have right of way. I was made blatantly aware of this the last time I visited the city, when I was riding an Uber in from the airport: once we reached midtown, some random guy walked into the middle of the intersection and stood there, despite the fact that we had a green light. When the car I was riding in slowed down so as not to hurt this person and give him time to walk away, the guy angrily punched the front of the car because we were moving at all, and then he walked away.

New York. What can I say?

But San Francisco is an entirely different animal. When I first moved to the South Bay, I was working not too far from home, and only needed a car to get to and from my job. But then I was hired by a startup in the city, which paid basically internship money to its full time employees (and I didn’t know any better about salary negotiation at the time) — so I continued living with my parents in the South Bay and commuted for four hours a day to and from the city.

The commute wasn’t terrible, in that I had just over an hour of train time, during which I could work or read or listen to podcasts. It was the second half of the commute from the train to work that was particularly trying. It was almost half an hour’s walk from the train to my office, and this was before the drought kicked in full-swing, so I was often walking in the rain.

I decided that I needed to cut my commute time, if only by a little bit, so I did what I saw so many other business people in my area doing: I bought a scooter.

A foot-powered scooter.

Not a flimsy Razor, but a serious, heavy-duty, adult-sized, city-use scooter. And I glided my way through SoMa on the daily.

This scooter was such a blessing. With the exception of days when the Giants played (because then the sidewalks would be crowded with slow-walking pedestrians in bright orange gear), I was able to fly from my office to the train while working right up to the absolute last minute.

Sure, the sidewalks in the area were absolute shit, and I probably could have broken my neck seven times over while scootering in the dark of winter. But I was always on time for the train, and I still managed to get my very-underpaid work done before I hit the train to work some more.

Speaking of hitting transportation.

One day in late spring, I stayed a little bit too late at work. I was going to walk out with my co-worker, but she decided to take a last minute bathroom break, which would have given me a close call with missing my train. I said goodbye and took my leave of her to rush to the station.

I hurtled down the sidewalks, clearing other pedestrians with practiced ease. And, while still following all of the traffic laws, I shot through intersections, hoping to beat the clock.

And that’s when I reached Harrison. I was scootering down 2nd Street, when rush hour traffic caught up to me.

I had the right of way, or I wouldn’t have risked entering the crosswalk. At the same time, a man in an SUV was making a left turn into the crosswalk. He had an “unprotected left,” meaning that he could make a left turn as long as no traffic was coming from the other direction and no pedestrians were in the crosswalk.

He was looking to his right, making sure that no traffic was hurtling toward his driver side, which meant that he didn’t see me enter the crosswalk.

In a split second, I went from forward motion to backward. He hit me on my left side and sent me spinning back. I landed on my left side. I felt my head hit the sidewalk twice.

My first thought after falling was: Did I just die?

My second thought: Oh my god, I’m going to miss my train.

My third: I am so glad I wore shorts under this skirt.

And then reality came back into focus.

I was in a lot of pain. Someone had stopped their car and was telling me not to move. (This good samaritan happened to be an off-duty EMT.)

The driver who had hit me pulled over and called 911. He and his passenger stayed with me until the ambulance came. And I was again told not to move as I was lifted into the back of the vehicle that would bankrupt me.

I mentioned that San Francisco is not a pedestrian’s city at the start of this article, and it was the ambulance ride that really solidified things for me: In the short ride from SOMA to San Francisco General (now Zuckerberg San Francisco General), two other calls came in from 911 about bikers who had been struck by cars.

My story doesn’t end there: In the ambulance, I told the EMTs that I felt like I had broken my left ankle. They said, “Shhhh. Your ankle is fine.” I nearly screamed when they took off my shoe, but apparently, that’s normal for a non-broken ankle (?).

I was admitted to the hospital via the emergency room, which was incredibly busy. So busy, in fact, that they didn’t have a room for me. I was told that I might have broken my neck and pelvis, so I was strapped to a rolling table and left alone in the hallway, with a wild-eyed man who was also strapped to a table and spitting obscenities. I was scared, but what could I do?

After an indeterminate amount of time, my mom showed up, and I was moved into a room. I was told that I needed monitoring for a potential concussion and that I’d need an expensive contrast CT scan to make sure that my pelvis and neck were intact.

I explained that both my pelvis and neck felt fine, but I was pretty sure my ankle was broken. I was told to be quiet and stick my arm out for an IV.

As it turns out, I have incredibly tiny veins and scarily low blood pressure. Only a very careful phlebotomist with a pediatric needle can properly set up an IV in my arms — and that was not the case in this particular instance. After blowing all of the veins in the crooks of my left and right elbows and several unsuccessful sticks in my hands and feet, I was left alone “to be monitored.”

I was given an X-ray of my pelvis and neck, and deemed “probably okay.” After 9 hours since the accident, I was released to go home. Had my mom not been able to pick me up, I would have been stuck in the city.

Now, if you’ve ever been to the hospital, you know that they usually wheel you out of the hospital in a wheelchair, even if you can walk.

At the time when I was released, however, the hospital was still hopping. Two unrelated gunshot wounds were being taken in around the same time, and I was told to go.

Only I was still unable to walk.

My mom and I had to buy a wheelchair so that she could wheel me to the car, because, apparently, it was too much for them to wheel me to my car.

And for the next week, I tried, unsuccessfully, to walk on my “sprained” ankle, resorting to the wheelchair when the pain got to be too great.

The following Thursday, I saw a podiatrist at Palo Alto Medical who didn’t see a break on an X-ray but decided to do an MRI for shits and giggles.

He called me the next day to tell me that I needed a cast, because my tibia had a diagonal fracture that couldn’t be picked up by a flat X-ray but showed up clearly in the 3D MRI. I had been walking on a broken ankle for a week.

The damage was healable, but I also ended up tearing my peroneal tendon in my right leg, which had been surgically fixed a year before, while compensating for the broken left leg on crutches — which meant another surgery. The man who hit me with his shiny, new SUV had taken out only the bare minimum on his insurance policy, and it was over a year before we settled. In the process, I spent more than $10K on medical bills, including paying off that stupid expensive ambulance ride. Insurance took another $10K from the settlement, and my lawyer took $12K. I was left with nothing in the end.

It took me a year before I was okay to go back to San Francisco. I stayed in the South Bay, getting permission to work from home and having severe anxiety any time I went more than half an hour away from my house. To this day, I still can’t ride the train alone; when I’m so far from home, my mind goes back to that feeling of, “I missed my train, and I can’t get home.”

It’s very probable that you’ll never have to go through an experience like this, but it’s not impossible; SF is a great city, but it’s definitely not a city where non-drivers can be off their guard.

Getting hit was a terrible experience, and it definitely put a lot of things into perspective for me. I was in my mid-twenties, and I could have died or been far more seriously injured. I escaped with some broken bones, bruises, and emotional trauma. I am immensely grateful that I’m still able to walk — and to visit San Francisco … which I do often. But I always take my own car.

And I always look both ways. Because some pedestrians haven’t yet gotten the memo that this is not their city. And I know better than to be the one to deliver it.

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